


Apotheosis

by GretchenSinister



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Far Future, Multi, OT6, Polyamory, eldritch guardians
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-26
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:35:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22912573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister
Summary: Original Prompt: "Whatever it is that the Guardians, Pitch, and similar spirits are, it’s very different from humans. Simply them being strange, alien spirits that a mortal would have trouble comprehending, or straight-up eldritch abominations, whatever. Can be anywhere between one or all of the characters. Bonus points for staying as close to the canon story and characterizations as possible, or even explaining canon events with this. I just want a story focusing on how vastly different these characters are from us."North is the last of them to change.(One form of endgame for the Edritch Abomination Polyamorous Whatever 'verse. Sandy and Pitch have been eldritch for a long time, Jack is the next Guardian to follow because he’s dead and technically his body isn’t even real, Bunny follows because of Jack. Tooth lingers longer because of North. In the end, though, North follows.)
Relationships: Nicholas St. North/Toothiana/E. Aster Bunnymund/Sanderson Mansnoozie/Jack Frost/Pitch Black
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13
Collections: RotG Polyamory Fics





	Apotheosis

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr on 10/21/2014.

They are finally all together, all six together, if any of them was the counting type, if anyone was around to count them. But they none of them like numbers very much, they do not need to make things with numbers to go places and understand things. When they want to go, there they are, and when they want to understand–well, they never _want_ understanding. In all, they know that some part of them or one of them, if the two are different at that moment, understands, and if they are not on the foldwave of energy to have that understanding to themselves–why, it cannot matter. It is a game to not understand, it is never a matter of life and death.  
  
And so in this moment within the orbit of a single moon reflecting a toolarge sun, only one of them maintains an awareness of number, only one who can think of himself as _he_ and _one_ still, the newest one. But the others are patient. They spread his thoughts like giant soap bubbles or miniature nebulae, showing him how to expand into the space not space he’d never understood before. They soothe him, telling him it is all right that he does not understand yet, that it is not a matter of life and death.  
  
They use his own understanding of death to explain this, as it is strongest and most present. It feels like hard earth under a dark sky, and makes him sad and afraid. He fears that some sort of light has gone, he feels that he has died and he feels this is important.   
  
It is hard for the others to understand.   
  
_North_ they whisper. _NorthNorthNorthNorth_  
  
They curl into his thoughts, finally large enough for them all, they’ve missed him so, oh why did he have to stay as he was for so long, touch us North, learn how to touch us without hands oh yes see you do not need your body.  
  
The awe that bubbles up around him tastes like salt and these are still tears, he is starting to understand but oh how can he not ache for that world of hard earth, that world with the sun too large now and no more children? Where will there be trees and lights and snow now? Where will anyone feel the  
  
rushing warmth inside of bitter cold and waiting hoping happy safe clearstars whitemagic mint and pine and fire on the darkest night  
  
anymore? Who is he to _give_ to? What is he to _make_?  
  
And the others stop, long enough for the moon to change its face, but none of them note this. They pass thoughts between them like keys and marbles and origami birds and butterscotch candies and dead leaves until they piece them together into an understanding, an understanding that must come in pieces from all of them because they have been so long away. This understanding is not easy, but it does not fail.  
  
And so they know. This is important. The making and the giving. This is not a matter of life and death because such things are not for them anymore, but if they had to use such simple words, it would be a matter equal to this.   
  
They condense. They condense and the newest one can feel the brush of feathers, feathers like the edges of a galaxy, feathers like the one he kept in a glass casket for thousands of years to prove that not all feathers were like the edges of a galaxy.   
  
He feels a curl of warm fur and his heart lightens, that is how it has always been, his heart leaps to feel this margin between them, that they might oppose each other as equals again, and hope laughs or he laughs with hope.  
  
He feels a cool breeze join in that laughter, smoothsharpness of timeless youth, trustme trustme, asks the joy and he does, he does. For the drowned boy loved the world, too, otherwise they could not have stayed a boy as long as they had.  
  
And then, ah, then. Bright one and dark one, shifting like sand, always and forever, lovehateoneness, kissing over the knife-edge between inspiration and insanity. The dark one takes his fear and perhaps eats it, perhaps twists it up and wears it as a wedding ring somehow, the dark one would do that, North knows, he’s been terrifyingly loved and favored for a long long time.  
  
The bright one nuzzles against him and greets him with a kiss of mulled wine, a kiss that goes straight to his head, a kiss that goes straight _through_ his head and dizzies him with laughter as it fades, as he tries to address them as he always has, _The Old Men_.  
  
The bright one tugs on the long white beard he hasn’t given up yet in his thoughts and they all laugh like a calm and sunlit ocean.  
  
What now, he asks.   
  
Be ours, says the Lady of Memory.  
  
And after that?  
  
You always had to be busy, one says, or they all say. His blush tickles them and he does not deny.  
  
It is rightnotstrange, the bright one says. Not just us forever, that is sogoodsogoodtoogoodterrible. They fall into a fractal pattern with the dark one, who is forced to agree through a simple sunset wave of embarrassed love.  
  
What are we to do, then? North asks again.  
  
You know, mostly the bright one says.  
  
He blushes again. It is too much, this thought, there is too much pride in it, but he wants to give, and he wants to make, and he misses the world when the sun was smaller and he could, hecouldtheycouldwecould  
  
The Lady of Memory knows his thoughts as soon as they pass and places a familiar hand on the arm he thinks he has. I remember everything, every detail, they say. I have the plans. You can fashion.  
  
The Drowned Boy’s whoop sets off a supernova ten thousand years early and the bright one and dark one separate enough to smile, to say, this way, and then they are no longer within the orbit of that first moon. The planet below them is only formless rock, but the sun shines on it a proper size and heat.   
  
Hope stands at North’s side and _you know how to start?_  
  
North points to the sun and stars and says, we are one day ahead already, we have time to plan, it must be perfect, it must be good.  
  
Absolutely not, the dark one says, the objection smelling like rotting fruit.  
  
And the bright one holds them closer and whispers like an orchard full of blossoms _you always say that_.


End file.
